and these, remember these
by TolkienGirl
Summary: These are the things Fili knows. (Battle of the Five Armies, Fili and Kili fic. Canon deaths; tragedy; angst-the usual. NO SLASH, of course). Please review!


**A/N: I know, I know. I'm a glutton for punishment. I just can't stop with the angsty Durin fics! *hands out tissues***

**Disclaimer: If they were mine, do you think I'd hurt them like this?**

These are the things Fili knows.

Kili was born on a day in midsummer, when the rock roses were beginning to bloom along the garden wall. And it was Dwalin—yes, it was Dwalin, Fili remembers, who put the squirming bundle into his arms for the first time.

"It's your brother, lad."

_Brother, always brother—and though he longs to find their uncle, it is at Kili's side he will stay, for now and for always—_

Dwalin's eyes had been bright then, with a look of almost-tears, because it was not so many days since that Dis's husband, their father, had not returned from battle.

_He did not know it then, but he knows it now, and he wonders if he will find his father in the halls of Mandos. He wonders if he will know him, for he can no longer recall his face—_

"You have your father's hair, son," and she'd run her hand through it, with a smile he _does_ know, and will never see again—not in this waking life—

These are the things Fili knows.

Kili took up the bow because he started training when he was too small to bear a sword.

He was too small because he was too young. He was too young because he wanted to follow his brother, because their mother had smiled, quick and sad, and told Dwalin to be gentle with them both.

_He fought like a warrior, Kili did, skilled and deadly and _not quite fast enough—

Kili is loyal, and reckless, and innocent. He laughs more often than his brother, and his hair is dark like his mother's and his uncle's but (they say) his features take after their father.

_Their blood is the same, though, dark on the frozen ground._

When Kili was a lad, their mother used to sigh over his messes—mud and jam streaked across his cheeks, fingers sticky with the remains of supper.

_It is the ribbon of blood between his lips that means death, Fili knows, and he dares not pry away his brother's stained fingers from his rent side._

These are the things Fili knows.

Kili is afraid of heights. When they faced the rock giants, Fili saw his brother go pale, and when they were parted, even in the clamor and peril, he hoped that Kili might not be too frightened, not too frightened to keep his balance—to hold on—to wait for his brother.

_If he had only waited now—_

Kili does not care for gold. Kili cares for sunlight, for the warmth of summer, for the roughness of meadow grass and the cool shade of the forest. But Kili loves their uncle, and he loves his brother, and he loves—_loved_—the adventure that he thought this journey would be.

_He is glad that he can be here, glad that if it must be Kili's end, it is his end too—for Kili would call for him if he was not here, and Fili would not know how to face a world without his brother._

These are the things Fili knows.

Kili's eyes were dark with pain when their uncle cursed all but the gold beneath his feet, and there were no words that Fili knew, in Khuzdul or in the Common Tongue, to tell his brother the lies he wished he could.

Kili is their uncle's favorite, but Fili is his heir. And Fili believes they could have borne those roles gladly, if their uncle could have borne to be king.

He will never be king now, and Fili hopes that someone forgives Thorin for all of this, even if he cannot forgive himself.

These are the things Fili knows.

He knows pain and sorrow and joy and childhood, his mother's eyes and the rarity of his uncle's smile.

He knows Kili better than he knows himself, and nothing—not even death—can take that from him.

_And when their eyes close together, forgetting forever their memories and mirth, Fili holds fast to midsummer's days, the sound of their laughter, and the weight of his brother in his arms._

Because these are the things that he knows.


End file.
